When Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Peter Wall, presented the operational honours and awards at a ceremony held at Sandhurst Military Academy in March, he said:

The remarkable acts of gallantry performed by these young men and women show that they are role models for their generation.
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There can be no better example of that than Private Abbie Martin, from the Royal Army Medical Corps. It was the 20-year-old combat medical technicians very first patrol in Afghanistan last summer when she was tested in a way that most can only imagine.
She was supporting a company operation in the Green Zone, the highly fertile area of farmland, woodland and marshes on either side of the Helmand River, when they fell prey to an insurgent ambush:

We had just left our compound when we were attacked. I was quite naïve and didnt know what to expect.
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Naïve or not, while under fire from multiple enemy firing points Private Martin headed across open ground with the platoon sergeant to treat a Grenadier Guardsman who had been shot in the chest:

Ive never felt so scared in my life. No-one can prepare you for the first time you are shot at. When you hear the whizz go past and you know its really close, you feel your heart beating in your head and its just so loud, and you think what am I doing here?
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But the second you hear that youve got a casualty your instincts start going and you just think Ive got to get there, Ive got to try and save this guys life.
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Due to the severity of the Guardsmans injury, Private Martin stayed with him, conducting manual resuscitation throughout the whole casualty extraction, selflessly exposing herself to enemy fire:

At one point I remember seeing the poppies moving next to me within metres and the rounds hitting a wall behind me. So I knew the bullets were close. But I couldnt stop working on the casualty. I had to focus on him.
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Private Abbie Martin of the Royal Army Medical Corps has been awarded the Queen's Commendation for Valuable Service [Picture: Sergeant Andy Reddy RLC, Crown copyright]Throughout all this, Private Martin had to keep a clear head and make crucial decisions:

They tried to get the helicopter near, but because the contact was so bad they couldnt land, so they asked me if I could move the casualty 600 metres so they could land safely. But I had to say there was no chance; if we had moved him he wouldnt have survived. So I made the decision to bring the landing site to where I was.
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Once safely back in base later that day, Private Martin admits to going through it all in her mind and thinking:

Im never going out again - not a chance. But then when it comes to it you think they need me, and I need them. You are scared, but when you are in contact and you look into the soldiers faces you know that theyre scared too. Then you know you are not the only one and that you are all in it together.
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Her mates assured her that she had just suffered a bit of bad luck, having to face all that on her first patrol. But then, barely a week later, Private Martin had to step up to the plate again.
Insurgents had attacked a compound leaving multiple casualties after a grenade had landed inside it:

People were screaming and falling off ladders. At this point I was the only medic so I had to run round triaging the casualties, conducting an initial assessment of their injuries to let the helicopter team know what they would be dealing with.
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Her citation says:

Throughout each action Martin was steadfast, putting her patients before herself, despite the dangers.
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On the award of the Queens Commendation for Valuable Service, she said:

I feel really proud. I looked around the room at the other people who had been given awards and felt that I didnt deserve to be there, because they had such amazing stories. Im such a shy girl. I never thought I would achieve as much as I have in the Army.
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This article is taken from a feature titled An Honour to Meet You, which has been published in the April edition of Defence Focus, where Ian Carr interviews 3 Service personnel who were recognised in the Operational Honours and Awards List published in March.